All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Okay.

Good evening and welcome to the Monday, June 15th, 2026 meeting of the Measure U Community Advisory Commission.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll and establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Member Smith?

Here.

Member Sala.

Here.

Member Cook.

Is absence?

Member Miller.

Member Johnston.

Here.

Member Ruiz Benitez.

Here.

Member Noveo.

Yeah.

Member Jarovsky.

Here.

Member Pascal is absent.

Member Fry Lucas.

Here.

Member Rosa is absent.

Uh Chair Georgioff is absent.

And Vice Chair McGee.

Present.

Thank you.

We have a quorum.

All right.

I'd like to remind everyone public and chambers today that if you'd like to speak on an agenda item, please turn in your speaker slip before the item begins.

Because once it starts, that item will no longer be able to accept speaker slips.

And then you have two minutes to speak once you are called on.

Now we'll proceed with today's agenda.

And I'd like to call Commissioner Resbinitez to lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance.

She's here.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgement in honor of Sacramento's Indigenous People and Tribal Lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nissan people, the Southern Maidu, Valley Plains, Miwok, Penn, Pantuin uh Wintoon peoples, and the people of Wilton Rentria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk besides us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and participation of Sacramento's indigenous people, history, contributions, and lives.

Thank you.

One nation under the justice for all.

Thank you so much for that.

Next is the approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public that wish to speak on the consent calendar at this time?

Thank you, Chair.

I do have one speaker slip, Mr.

Lambert Davis.

Okay, Nikki.

My family said you need to study this, so I studied it, and one thing I don't see on here is I don't see a concerted effort by the measure you.

They were able to really insist that the Office of Innovation and Economic Development.

And they were allowed to do that, and that's a violation of the Brown Act.

That's a stickler for me.

Also, I was one of the people who was gonna speak.

And so I was not allowed to speak.

Had the decision been made at nine minutes, you should have taken the public.

It wasn't that many people here, just like it's not tonight.

You could have gone with me and I think it was two others.

That's six minutes.

Which means you would have covered everybody and then had them come back.

The checks don't get cut until July 1st.

You should really emphasize that they should come before you.

If not, then they're talking about cutting your meetings to five meetings.

I mean, they they almost have you where they might as well eliminate the commission if you can't meet like that.

I mean, you met for 10 times and barely could get a lot done.

Thank you for your comments.

Chair, I have no additional speakers on this item.

Okay.

Seeing none, is there a motion and a second for the consent calendar?

And I'll second.

Okay.

Moved by uh Commissioner Salah and seconded by Commissioner.

Ooh.

Novello.

You know I know your name.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, all in favor.

All right.

Aye.

All right.

It passes.

Thank you, Chair.

I saw I heard a unanimous yay vote with no uh nays or abstentions.

Correct.

Thank you.

All right, we'll now proceed to the discussion calendar.

Um, first thing up is approval of the uh measure you advisory commission meeting minutes for May the 18th, 2026.

Chair, we just approved those in the consent calendar.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

Keep me together.

We're at item number five.

Thank you.

That's where the discussion calendar starts.

Perfect.

Thank you so much for that.

Keep me together, keep me together.

Okay.

First thing up is overview of measure you funded departments and programs.

Library, do we have anyone here to speak on behalf of the library department?

Please come forward.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Coyle.

I'm the library director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library.

Thank you for having me here this evening to talk about the library and what we do.

Um, as a resident of Sacramento, I also want to thank you for the time you spend on this commission.

I know it takes a lot of work, so thank you for being here tonight.

Um, Sacramento Public Library, we are uh a joint powers agency organized under California law.

We serve the residents of the entire county and its member jurisdictions, with the exception of Folsom.

Folsom City is its own city library department.

So we operate 28 libraries throughout the county uh in all of the member jurisdictions on behalf of those uh here in the city of Sacramento.

We have uh 11 libraries, including our uh central library across the street.

Uh, we serve 1.5 million residents in the county, uh, and we have a staff of over 400.

Uh we have a mission, vision, and value statement.

I won't belabor that, but I would encourage you to read those.

Uh generally, the library's mission is to serve the community and to find ways that we can help our community better and improve themselves through the information and resources that the library has and that the community has as well.

We have a strategic plan which we have adopted and have four focus areas that we're focusing on, which includes a lifelong love of learning and reading.

I think that's pretty key to what we do.

And we have inclusive neighborhood hubs, collaborating for equity, and youth empowerment.

And so these are some of the focus areas that we are uh emphasizing over the next couple years.

We adopted this plan last year, and this is a community-centered plan where we asked the community what they were looking for and what they needed.

Not necessarily from the library, but just in general, and our plan is to see how the library can help these uh groups uh achieve those goals and how we can bring people together and partner.

Uh the library does lots of things really well, but we are not experts at everything, and we like to bring people together and have those experts to those great programs and services that we as librarians maybe aren't trained or or equipped to do.

We last year checked out 4.1 million books, 4.8 million E titles for a total of 8.9 million items.

It's one of our highest years of circulation, and we have a robust collection, and we have a very enthusiastic readership, which allows us to have these numbers.

We are very enthusiastic to get books into the hands of children and adults, and we thank our partners, the Friends of the Sacramento Public Library, for sponsoring a program we have called Book First, which does that in a number of schools across the county.

Last year, 154,000 people attended programs at the library.

It's a pretty high number if you look at peer libraries.

We're a little ahead of what most people do.

We provide a number of programs across the system to serve a wide variety of ages and interests.

You can see a highlight on those pictures there.

The lower picture is actually a film screening and book discussion at Dreamland Cinema.

We have a partnership with them.

The top picture is a cooking demonstration that we had as some of our as part of our summer last year.

We had a local group that does food education on food insecurity and things come.

We've partnered with them as part of our lunch at the library program.

And then below, I'm not sure if you guys know E Train.

He's a local local young man who is very active in the community and has a great podcast.

We are in the process of renovating a number of our buildings.

Last or a couple years ago, the state library had what's called the Building For Infrastructure Grant Program, and that allowed the member jurisdictions to apply for funding to renovate, rehab, and repair existing library buildings.

And the City of Sacramento, a member jurisdiction that we have here, partnered with us and they applied because they own the buildings, and we received a number of grants.

We were one of the, I think we were in the highest grant recipients in the state as a jurisdiction as the library received about 10 grants.

We are looking to open that here in the fall.

I was just in there the other day, and it is looks much better.

There are some pictures on our website.

We have the shelves and the books are coming in, and we're getting it outfitted and ready for the public to come in.

I have a typo on the North Sacramento Hagwood Library, not early 2026, early 2027.

That's a total mistake.

It was never supposed to open this year, it's supposed to open next year, and that building is underway as well.

Martin Luther King Junior Library, that is the first renovation that buildings had in the over 40 years that it was built.

And the North Sacramento Hagenwood is a renovation and a repurposing of the old Sacramento News and Review building.

That library will move from a rented 4,000 square foot space into this new building, which is about 15,000 square foot.

So it will quadruple the space of that building, includes a community room and a maker's space and study rooms, things that that community doesn't have currently.

So we're very excited to have these facilities come online in the next year.

Summer reading is happening right now, and I'd encourage you all to sign up for that.

It's not just for kids, it's for adults too you can earn prizes.

We have some amazing things this year.

But last year we had nearly 24,000 readers who read nearly 260,000 books, which is 2.8 million minutes read.

If you join, maybe we can get up to three million.

So I'll come back and ask you guys how you do after after the summer.

We have medals you can earn, and we have backpacks.

There's some very cool prizes that not just the kids enjoy, so I think you'll you'll find something there that you'll enjoy as well.

Youth is a big focus.

Uh so we also partner with a number of community groups to provide summer lunches at number of our locations.

We don't do it all of our locations.

If there's a member of school, a school in the area that's providing it or another community group, we don't, but we will often partner with them and provide this in the summer for some of those school districts.

We have part-time summer interns who help run that program.

We have 64 of them last year, 11,000 meals and 13 branches.

Without this program, a number of these students wouldn't have a lunch during the summer, so we're glad to be able to provide that program.

I'm gonna talk about some of the services the library offers that are funded through the funding that we get from our member jurisdictions.

We have a new website which you can go to and find lots of things on there.

You can check out items, e-content and have our databases.

You can also hold books and have them sent to your local library and a number of other things, as well as register for programs, and learn about using meeting rooms and stuff.

So I'd encourage you to look at our new website and see if there's things in there that would apply to you and your life.

Our number one, I think, thing that people are always excited about is Libby.

That's our ebook app.

We purchase or we license our ebooks through Overdrive, and this is their app.

This allows you to check out books, and they will return themselves when they are done.

It doesn't cost you anything.

Excuse me.

People often ask us how do we get our ebooks.

We don't get them directly.

The vendor works out those arrangements with the publishers, and so we are able to do it that way.

There is a nationwide issue right now where there's a big expensive ebooks, costs us about as four times as much as a regular print book.

And so this is an issue nationwide that libraries are facing.

And there's been some conversations in some states and some federal legislation about ebook pricing.

So this may change in the next couple years, but right now it costs us quite a bit of money to do.

And as you saw, we now check out more ebooks than print books.

You can also get your news at the library.

We do have the Sacramento B.

You can get your hometown newspaper there along with all these other storied publications, Wall Street Journal, New York Times as well.

So those are available for people with your library card for free.

We also have lots of research tools for people who are in school or just the curious person, and so we encourage you to look at those.

Culture Grams has been around for a long time.

I remember when that would come in a book.

We have to put a binder.

Now it's all online, but those are great summaries for countries and things that help you keep abreast of the world today.

We also have language learning.

If you have a third party like Duolingo or something like that, you can actually get Mango languages for free from the library.

It does the same thing.

I don't know if it does it better or not, but it's free, and a number of people like it, but I encourage you to look at that as well.

There's also a great thing called pronunciator, which tells you how to pronounce words and names.

It's a great tool.

I've used it on occasion myself.

Also, if you like to do hobbies, we have lots of databases and things that you can look at on how to do hobbies.

We have craft databases and some other things.

We also have Canopy, which is a streaming platform for movies, and you can stream things for free on there as well.

Number of services we offer, we have specialty checkouts.

You guys may be aware of our library of things.

That's at four locations, and we're looking to expand that.

We also have cake pans if you like to bake.

You can check out a cake pan from the library.

We also have kitchen aid stand mixer attachments to help you make that cake.

So we were a one-stop shop, and you can check those out and then return them to the library.

We also have museum passes.

I highlighted a couple of our local museums that you can get free passes to go with you, and uh it depends on the the pass, but sometimes it includes a family as well.

And then the Sacramento Room that's at the library uh across the street.

That contains all of our old and very cool things about Sacramento, uh from uh books to newspapers.

We have a number of pieces of artwork as well.

Um it's a great place to research if you're looking for Sacramento history.

We also partner with the Center of Sacramento History and some other local groups uh to share resources and provide programming as well.

And we also have maker spaces at a number of locations.

Um we're very excited to uh to have those uh again as a community-focused library.

We this last year did a survey of the community and the users to find out what they wanted, and we're trying to be responsive to that.

We're really excited to have uh a new makerspace come online at the North Sacramento Hagenwood Library when it opens.

Um, sorry, that would be a library of things.

Uh, and they also have space for a makerspace which will outfit uh the library of things is being funded by the Rotary Club of North Sacramento, and then the makerspace is provided by the library, uh, but that will be a the newest makerspace, one of our largest ones as well.

Uh so we're looking forward to having that.

We also work with adults and helping them learn to read.

Uh, literacy is an issue in this county and in the state and in the nation, adult literacy specifically, and so we have a program uh which matches volunteers with uh adult volunteers with adult learners to learn how to read and practice and and gain those skills.

We also um uh do that, and then we have the career online high school, which is free that you can get your high school equivalency if you did not complete that and then continue on to college.

Uh we had a number of people graduate last year.

We have a graduation ceremony, there's about 15, 20 students, and it was a great, it's one of the highlights of the year to see the students find finish this program and and get recognized for the hard work that they've done.

Uh and then the the budget, most of our funding uh goes well, it's it's pretty even.

Uh all of it come most of it comes from property taxes and tax dollars.

We do get a small uh five percent from other things, rental of the galleria, fines and fees, grants, gifts from their friends, uh but a majority of our portion of our funding comes from tax dollars from our member jurisdictions, and then we are a public organization, we deal with the public, so obviously most of our salaries, most of our funds go towards salaries, and the next part is services and books, and then a small amount for our capital expenses.

Um that's the extent of the presentation about uh the library and services we offer.

I'm I'm happy to answer questions from you about the library and anything else that um that I might be able to helpful with tonight.

You're welcome.

Public that wish to speak on this I am clear.

Thank you, Chair.

I have no speaker slips for this item.

All right, do we have any commissioners that want to speak on this item?

Have any clarifying questions?

Any thoughts to share with the department?

All right.

First, I'll say I have a household full of library nerds.

We love our libraries.

And I do live very uh close to MLK library, that's the oldest library in the city is Sacramento, I was told.

It's like 54 years.

Yeah, I I would I would say it's probably not the oldest because we have the McClatchy library, which I think is a little older.

But I would say that it is it is one of our older libraries.

Um, I'm definitely excited about MLK opening up.

You're gonna love the inside.

I mean, talk about your it's beautiful, it's absolutely beautiful.

There's some pictures on our website.

Okay, but we um um council member Vang uh posted some pictures, I think on her social media.

She was in the other day, so she has some maybe some more up-to-date photos from just the other day.

It's gonna look really great.

Great.

My question is though, when you close the library, where do you put the people?

Yeah, so we redistribute them to other libraries.

So in this case, the staff at King, we redistributed them to other libraries across the system.

Um they oftentimes fill in for people who are out on leave or or just fill in uh because we know that the libraries around King, they're gonna get, they got more use, so we really distribute those people around the area to continue to support the the surrounding libraries as well.

That's perfect.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Okay, Commissioner Muezmanita's novella.

Oh, be me.

Um sorry, I'll be using this.

Mike is sent.

Um thank you, and I appreciate your full report, um, not just your presentation as really well detailed.

Um, two issues that I want to discuss.

A first one on one of your PowerPoint presentations and and on your power, you have the strategic focus.

Would it be possible to get a copy of your strategic plan?

Yeah, it's it's on our website.

Yeah, we can definitely, yeah, it's definitely on there.

Uh, library street, and go to the the web page, it's there.

Yeah.

And and I and I'm asking this because through our experience of living in Sacramento, and I think it's a movement that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

The library's as community assets, in my perspective, has so much potential.

And that drives to my second question, and this is a question.

Um, I noticed that you had the health education council being the ones administrating or facilitating the cooking session in one of your libraries.

So, what percentage of community-based organizations are actually using your facilities instead of those events or activities being managed or facilitated by uh city staff?

Yeah, so I think that's a that's an interesting question.

I don't have the answer for you right now.

I think there's a distinction made between uh us as a library partnering with a group and a group renting or using our space.

I think there's a there's a difference.

Um, and so in this case, this was the library partnering with a group.

So in terms of that, um, we typically try to do that.

I couldn't give you a percentage, but I know that our first uh order of visits is usually to go to a community group and try and partner with them.

And if they can't, then the library will do it.

But most of our, I'd say most, but a good portion uh we involve some community partners.

And is that something that is administered or facilitate, or at least in a proactive way, be looked at internally to have those partnerships?

Yeah, and that's the point of our strategic plan is to go out and and find out how we can help the the neighborhood organizations and the CBOs and these other things.

So we're definitely trying to do that, and that's our our first first.

So, roughly, if I was to ask again for the percentage, what's a percentage?

If I go to a library, what's a percentage of me walking in, and there'll be an activity facilitated and practically uh done internally rather than an external community partner.

Um I couldn't answer that.

That's a pretty broad question.

I'd have to, there's a lot of variables there.

Um I I wouldn't be able to give you uh I wouldn't want to guess on a on the public record on that.

And for the rest of the members of the other commission, uh I think and in the many times a lot of those community spaces that are at our libraries, um, are not used.

And there's a lot of times that a lot of our community-based organizations are looking for rooms in which they can um they can you know host events and that connection between libraries and the city with a community is something that is important to me and it should be important to all of us.

And I know your staff has been really great at facilitating uh rentals and partnerships through all of that.

And my argument or my um suggestion will be let's do more of that.

Sure, we I I'd love to, and um you know, any group can apply to use our space.

Um, and we and that's the point of the strategy plan is to bring those groups in and use that, so that is our emphasis.

But continue.

Again, folks don't know what they don't know.

So that's why my question was is how much of that is done internally.

How can we ensure that there's more people who understand that these are community assets that they're already paying for?

Sure.

That they should be taking about a job.

Yeah, and I I'm I'm hesitant to say that because we also have like all of our programs, including story time, so not all of us have community groups that can do that.

So that's why I'm hesitant to give you a number, but we can definitely look at that and give the commission some information.

I hope we can have a percentage next time with me.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Commissioner Smith.

Uh, there it is.

Thank you for all that you do.

Um are you open to a little criticism?

Uh personally or the library?

Well, actually.

We're always looking for feedback.

We do serve the public, and that's how we can improve.

Okay.

Uh, actually, uh a little column A, a little column B as far as the criticism goes.

Um your presentation focused primarily on outputs.

Uh on outputs, yes.

Or not connected necessarily to uh inputs, and to a little more limited degree on outcomes.

Um so for the last year, this commission's been taking a look at um, well, value for bet for lack of better words.

We look at return on investment and accountability and whatnot, and um as you think about um seeking funding from measure you in the future, uh, I would encourage you to focus on outcomes or outputs that relate to outcomes that uh make these numbers meaningful for us.

You say that you have a circulation, I believe it was a physical circulation of 4.1 and 4.8 electronic.

Um that's fantastic, but I as a commissioner have no idea how that compares to other cities.

Is that good?

Is that bad?

Um again, we're taking a look at return on investment.

I think by the way, you're underplaying your hand there.

Um you mentioned that you had 15 or 20 people who use your facilities to go on and get their high school educations.

When we take a look, one of the programs or one of the the departments that we highlighted this last year was our economic development department, because they tend to focus on developing youth in part, um, toward getting their high school degrees and whatnot, uh, which is fantastic, but we need to bring out the value of that for adult learners as well.

Um, and I you know that's that is value that your organization brings.

Uh Commissioner Vella is absolutely correct.

The libraries in and of themselves for what they do, what they represent, for the access that they give to individuals, um, are an asset.

But and by the way, this is incumbent upon us as commission as well.

When we take a look at return on investment, when we take a look at um what a department does, it is as important for us to recognize that return on investment is not limited and is not limited to the revenues that a department produces, it is also related to the assets that it creates.

It is also uh like adult learners who all of a sudden are more likely to go out and find a job, are more likely to go out and hold a job, or more likely or less likely to wind up on unemployment or other public programs.

Um I encourage you, sir, to focus on the value that the library brings, and a lot of it is implicit.

I get that, but where you can please try to relate what it is that the libraries do in a way that is meaningful uh so we can understand it contextually and in a way that demonstrates the value to this community, and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Maybe I can uh correct something.

I I didn't mean to intimate that only 15 people did the program.

That's who walked.

There were over 100 that participated in that.

So I just want to be clear on that.

It was more than 15.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Salah.

Yes, thank you for your presentation.

And I just want to say that um Diego for the South Umatoma Community Center.

He comes every month to our meeting.

Um I'm sorry, I'm Mar Bay, I'm the um commissioner for District Three, and I'm also the president of Gardenland Northgate Neighborhood Association.

And he comes every every month, and he gives us an update as to what are the programs that they're doing, and I think if if it wasn't for that, we wouldn't know, but it's not, but more of that outreach has to happen in communities because uh he's right, people don't know what they don't know.

Um, and if you haven't gone into the library, you're not aware of all the the breadth of services that you provide.

You're just thinking, oh, you go there for a library or using the computer, but it's so much more than that.

And I appreciate that Diego makes a commitment to come once a month to us to share what what is happening there.

The the thing that I noticed is on the services that you talked about.

There's we don't we don't have a three uh South Nathomas library, doesn't have a 3D printer, graphic design software, sound mixing software, musical instruments, or sewing machines.

So what happened to our community in getting these services?

And I I would I would and I don't know how the decision was made.

There must have been some decision that was made, and maybe some of it was financial, but that's why we give you measure you, so that measure you funds should be utilized to see okay what what um under resource community might need some of these services that we don't have the resources for, so we're gonna we're gonna target measure you funds.

And I know that you we was it two years ago, yeah.

Is it two years ago?

Um the tax passed um the property taxing and it's been extended, and um so some of that money, what I understand that a lot of that money was to continue funding the overall library and services so that you're not strapped every time trying to figure out how how you're gonna provide the services.

Um the other thing, and I I know that this is a challenging time, but in our in our community, and I imagine probably in um district two, maybe another district over there by um I would say district six, maybe there's a large um non-English speaking populations, so and I didn't see that here, and I know you can't you can't put everything in there, but I would be interested to see what services are provided for non-English speakers, um, because that that and right now with this whole anti-immigrant kind of sentiment that's in this country, a lot of immigrants are scared and they want a safe place to go.

And I know the city is is um gonna pass an ordinance real soon saying that it's all protected space, so ice can't even come into the library, and I don't I don't know that um immigrants even know that that it'll it's a protected and safe environment for them to come because ice cannot come in that building.

Um, but they're also realizing that they need to learn they want to learn English, and where could they go or what kind of services like these?

I know the reading time, some of it is in Spanish.

I don't know that it's gonna you know it's in all the libraries, but it would be nice to see what non-English speaking services and what services are really being provided for the immigrant and non-English speaking in our community.

Okay, that's it, but thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Commissioners Rias Benitas or and Orinovella.

That would be me, and I'm just gonna put this in the public record.

I know uh commissioner uh Sala and I had had at times I just feel like we need to think differently, and we need to think about our community assets that are city assets a little bit different, and I'll give an example.

There's no reason why we cannot use, for instance, a parking lot, all the different uh libraries, as taco plazas, uh like in the afternoons when they're all empty that they can just come in and operate.

If it is a pointing where we just need to figure out how to administer that, I can bring more taxes and more revenue and and there's a point that I wanted to interrupt.

Uh um uh commissioner over there, Smith.

Community.

Community is important to our community, and any opportunity they get, they will take it.

I know that for the Hispanic community.

I mean, I grew up going having tacos in the corner, and if you go to Mexico, that's what they do.

And they become so who we are, and instead of regulate, which is true to fear, right?

Ways and how we can be creative with a community assets that we have to really innovate the new birthday of our communities in Sacramento.

That's it.

Commissioner Miller.

Uh yeah, just uh wanted to if I'm wondering if you could kind of expand on the library's uh efforts at accessibility uh for people with disabilities, language minorities, disadvantaged communities, just kind of, you know, what how do you think about it and and I don't know what it I guess how do you think about it and what and how does how does that how is that approached by the library?

Sure.

Yeah, so we uh we provided materials not just in English but in uh at least 16 other languages.

We call them community languages, the majority languages based on the census population in our communities.

So we do have books at a number of all of our locations in languages other than English, and we provide uh flyers and other things in other languages as well.

Um and so I think that's the the basis that we do, but we do also provide story times in other languages, uh, traditionally Spanish.

We have on occasion done some others, including American Sign Language.

Um, and so we do an effort uh to do that.

Um I think we we uh I think that's that's the basis of what we do.

I think we do some other things, but I'm I'm not prepared to give you a recitation at this point, but um we can definitely get you that information if you'd like.

Um, and what about in terms of people with disabilities?

Sure, yeah, thank you.

Um so uh we have had some uh we do do some story times on occasion with some groups in the community.

Uh we also um uh one of the major things we we made sure we did with the jurisdictions was uh we have a number of libraries closed right now for ADA accessibility renovations, so always making sure our spaces are accessible.

Um we also uh have uh purchased a number of uh accessibility devices at locations, um making sure that all of our uh community rooms have uh uh loop systems and other things.

Um we also have some social interns uh which interact with our customers and make sure that we are providing the services and meeting their needs.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll close it out.

I'll close it out by just asking, and I'm putting on my um I'm the parent site council um representative for my daughter's school in North Ottomas, and I hope you hear the passion, right?

Because the library is so many things to so many people in community.

I don't know if that's the sentiment in these days, but I know growing up the library was a safe haven.

That's where we hung out and we read books and we did all the things, but that was like kind of the community hub.

Um, what what's your um partnership like library to um school districts and into the local communities?

Because I know like in Northern Thomas, being a Paso Verde parent, I would love to bridge the gap and maybe you know after this connect on ways that we can bring our community and the school into the library because I don't see that happening and yeah.

Uh that is a great question.

Um we do our best to have those relationships.

Each branch is responsible for cultivating that, and we are more successful at with other schools.

It does sometimes change year to year based on the principle and other things.

Um, but we do do our best to go in and do uh talks about summer reading, do book first, and we do have a number of schools that do take field trips to the library.

Um, but again, I I think that's site dependent, and it it also sometimes based uh depends on the teachers too.

Uh so we try and make those connections, but uh oftentimes it's just a matter of of availability and resources from the school.

Um, you know, we are open and and willing to have people come to the library, uh, but we have to have coordination with that.

And I think uh the I think the schools are programmed so heavily it's hard to get away sometimes.

Um, but we do definitely try and do that.

Uh North Natomas, I think a little bit different because we are right there by the high school, so it tends to be maybe our emphasis.

Um, but I do know that the librarians there have very strong relationships with the schools in the area.

Um they've done a number of book first and other visits.

Um so I'm happy to talk to you offline more if there's some specific questions you have about how we can improve that or what sort of school interactions would be beneficial.

Love to hear that.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Alright, hearing no other comments from commissioners.

No one else is here to speak.

We'll move on to the discussion calendar item number six, which is an update on the priority strategic work plan and performance management framework.

And we'll give a slight pause as our speaker steps.

Steps up to the podium.

Good evening, Madam Chair, Commissioners, Ashra Ghani, Special Projects Manager in the City Manager's Office.

I'm really here tonight to just give you an update on where we're at with our performance management program.

I actually gave a similar presentation to the city council back on May 5th.

So there's a little bit of updates in here, but it's mostly a reiteration of what we presented to council.

So where we've been, this really reflects months of alignment across departments to turn priorities into action.

So back in September, the council had it held an off-site workshop where they identified three priorities for the city.

Those are economic development, public safety, and homelessness.

Since that time, departments really got to work.

They identified priority vision statements for each of those priorities.

They identified sets of initiatives that were either new or existing that align with those priorities, and they established milestones to track progress on those initiatives.

Earlier this year, as the new city manager came on board, we started to look more closely at those initiatives to really try to develop some concrete objectives in terms of articulating what it is that we're trying to achieve as the city as a city, and we divided those up into focus areas so that they're easier to follow.

At this point, we have about 31 initiatives, so it can be overwhelming if you're just looking at it at a long list, but as we'll kind of present throughout the presentation, you'll see them organized by these focus areas.

So, like I said, on May 5th, we presented this plan to council.

Since then, we are starting to move to implementation.

So we're really starting to work with departments.

We have a pilot department, the community development department that's really going to go first.

They're gonna be a model from which the other departments will learn from.

At the same time, the remaining departments are developing key results, which are measurable objectives or targets that they want to achieve by the next fiscal year, as well as specific performance measures.

So later in the presentation, we'll kind of show what this all looks like visually, how it's all organized.

Effectively, it's kind of a lightweight strategic plan.

In terms of tracking the time period, we're just gonna match up with the fiscal year.

So July 1st, which is in a few weeks, is gonna be that start period where this plan really starts to meet the road.

So we kind of started with this question like as a city, do we have the tools to close the gap between the city that we have today and the city that we want to become?

This challenge isn't about vision, it's really this gap between intention and results.

The right tools are gonna help us know whether we're making progress by how much and whether we ultimately succeeded.

So the three priorities I mentioned, those tell us where to focus our resources, but a strategic plan is gonna help us answer the question are the things we're doing actually making a difference.

And I think you hopefully some of this language feels familiar because clearly we've we've heard from you as a commission in terms of what you've been asking for from us.

And so we this is not only part of the city manager's vision, but we hope you see it's uh a reflection of your request and your persistence to get better data.

And again, you you will have um heard this before.

So we've historically measured activity rather than than outcomes.

So, how many calls were answered?

How many permits were issued?

How many people were served?

What we measured much less of is whether those calls resolved the problem, whether businesses actually stayed open, whether lives actually improved.

Again, this is what you've been telling us.

Um, and so this was position for counsel, but obviously, as volunteers who are serving on this public commission, we all believe that things can be different, and that's why we're here.

We're not here to just monitor the status quo and sort of check a box.

We want to kind of move the needle on areas where there are deficits or opportunities where we want to improve.

So whether that's economic development, public safety, homelessness.

And so these are the tools I'm really talking about, setting clear goals, using honest data, and most importantly, this concept of relentless follow-through.

You'll start to see that repeat throughout the presentation.

When we see areas where we want to improve, we're going to be laser-focused on driving improvement and trying to reallocate resources, shift our tactics, make sure that we're not just letting things idle.

So, you know, we want to connect this hope for the future with results that residents actually experience.

And so this is we're calling this one city one future.

This is the ecosystem or the framework that connects priorities, the three priorities, the work that departments do, and the results that ultimately result into one system.

And so I'll kind of talk through the different components of one city one future.

The first is those priorities.

The second is the city managers' priorities strategic work plan.

I'm going to walk through the details of that following this slide.

That includes the vision statements, the focus areas, the objectives and the initiatives.

And then Sacramento stat, which I'll also share with you in more detail.

Um that we're using internally, but this is that follow-through process that we're using as we look at data and drive change within departments.

So starting with public or sorry, with economic development, the vision statement is to be the best place in California to do business through policies and investments that retain and create quality jobs, improve the health and vitality of our communities, and support the responsible development of all of Sacramento's neighborhoods.

We have three focus areas under this priority.

Number one is jobs and economic development.

Number two is neighborhood and corridor development, and number three is creating a vibrant destination where people want to visit.

So at this point, I'm gonna kind of walk through, I'm just gonna stay at the objective level because if I start going through all of the initiatives, you're probably gonna fall asleep.

We'll run out of time in the meeting.

So under jobs and economic development, the objective is that residents across all neighborhoods have access to more high-quality employment and economic advancement resources.

Under neighborhood and commercial development, the objective is that development timelines are reduced through streamlined approval processes and underutilized properties are converted to productive use, expanding housing supply, and economic opportunity across Sacramento's neighborhoods.

And sorry if it wasn't obvious, I should in the staff report, hopefully you've had a chance to see it.

There's much more detail on these initiatives.

It specifies the department that's responsible, and there's more of a longer description of what that initiative actually is.

Under vibrant destination, the objective is that residents and visitors have access to a diverse and evolving mix of food, entertainment, arts and culture, and leisure experiences across districts grounded in Sacramento identity, culture, and history.

Alright, so shifting to public safety.

The vision statement here is that public safety in the city of Sacramento is the collective effort to protect life, uphold constitutional rights, prevent harm, and create the conditions where every person, especially our youth, can live, learn, work, and thrive without fear.

It includes prevention, emergency response, preparedness, recovery, and the coordinated delivery of police, fire, medical, behavioral health, environmental, and community-based services.

So here we have four focus areas.

The first is crime reduction, the second is alternative response, the third is first responder quality and trust, and the fourth is traffic safety.

So under crime reduction, the objective is that residents, businesses, and communities will be less impacted by crime and will benefit from strengthened community violence reduction programs under alternative response.

This is really thinking about how calls come into 9-1-1 and traditionally we send out a police car or a fire truck.

What are some alternative ways that are more cost-effective and really more effective in terms of the outcome?

Both the Department of Community Response and the fire department are testing different pilot projects to basically achieve this objective where residents experiencing barriers to care, behavioral health, substance abuse, or homelessness-related needs receive timely response matched to the nature and acuity of their situation.

Under first responder quality and trust, there's two here because one is police and the other is fire.

So under the first one, we have communities experience positive relationships with first responders through transparent ethical service and investment in employee development and wellness.

And then the second is, and you all are familiar with this program, the door diversity outreach and recruitment effort under the fire department in order to ensure that that workforce reflects the diversity of the community it serves.

And under traffic safety, the objective is that residents benefit from improved street safety conditions citywide through implementation of targeted high impact safety engineering improvements.

Lastly, on the priority strategic work plan, we have the homelessness priority.

Try to get through this pretty quickly.

The second is the unsheltered homelessness population, and the third is governance and funding.

So under long-term housing stability, there's two objectives.

The first is more people experiencing homelessness or connected to permanent supportive housing, meaningfully reducing the city's unsheltered population.

And the second is that households identify to be at risk of homelessness are assisted with their housing instability through a unified countywide prevention program.

Under unsheltered homelessness, people experiencing homelessness have access to safe supported shelter options.

And then under governance and funding, we have the city and its regional partners operate under updated governance frameworks, strengthening cross-jurisdictional coordination, and homelessness services are sustainably funded through secured state and federal grants.

Again, that was 31 initiatives across those three focus areas, sorry, across those three priorities and a number of focus areas in between.

So Sacramento STAT.

So yeah, what I just presented on the previous slides was kind of what we're trying to accomplish.

Here we're going to go into sort of the how, the actual performance management system that we're gonna be using.

We're calling it Sacramento STAT, status for statistics.

It's based on a national model called performance stat.

And it's the system that makes this all real.

So looking at kind of the history of performance stat, it started out as CompSTAT in the New York police department in the 90s.

So it's a pretty old framework.

Eventually, Mayor Martin O'Malley in the city of Baltimore created CityStat, which was a citywide approach, and so a lot of this was like it was kind of new to use data in the public sector.

So I know we're kind of dating ourselves here, but um, you know, it's a proven model.

So it had expanded nationally to many different cities.

They saw what Baltimore was doing, and here we are in 2026.

What is that, 32 years later, adopting it here in Sacramento, and just to give you a sense of the variety of different approaches that jurisdictions have taken.

They're listed on the screen.

One of the ones that I like to point out is the fact that a lot of these are like topic specific, and we'll actually be doing that at the city as well.

So in the example I gave with the community development department that's going to be going first, they have a program called Streamline Sacramento, which is looking at our development process and ways to streamline that, make it more efficient, increase the amount of building activity and housing supply.

We're going to call that streamline stat.

So when they go first, and they're not even going to go department wide since they have you know animal control planning, code enforcement, they're going to focus really specifically on this streamline Sacramento process.

So we're calling it streamline stat.

Another example would be BlightStat out of New Orleans.

So after Hurricane Katrina, there were a number of vacant and blighted properties.

They implemented BlightSTAT in New Orleans to really focus the city's attention and efforts to revitalize and get those vacant and abandoned properties activated.

So it's been done in a lot of places.

So ultimately, like what is it?

It's really, and this is where that follow-up comes in.

It's a series of ongoing data-driven meetings with staff to identify key challenges, diagnose problems, devise solutions, and track results.

So this is really about people and process.

It's, you know, we often often think about data as dashboards and numbers and spreadsheets, but this is about people.

This is about leadership driving progress to achieve the outcomes that residents want and deserve.

And so it's built on this idea that when leaders show up regularly with data and answer for results in front of their peers, performance improves.

So accurate and timely data, stat meetings, which I'm going to get into that structure and format in just a second.

That relentless follow-up where we're not just observing that there's deficits in performance, but actually following up by shifting resources and attention to see if things improved.

And then clearly we want to build some public transparency, but that's obviously gonna have to come a little bit later.

So I'll get into timeline a little bit throughout later in the presentation, but again, a lot of what we're doing here is this is this is internally facing.

This is a performance tool for the city manager to use with her department heads to ensure that they're accountable for results.

So in terms of the stat cycle, um I'm gonna start in the upper right, and then we'll kind of go through it clockwise.

So this is just giving you insights in terms of how the sausage is made.

Departments will provide data to us in the city manager's office.

We will then work with that department to develop a memo in advance of a meeting.

So in that memo, we will identify key data points and trends and issues.

Again, we're not just this is not a dog and pony show.

We're not trying to just show how great everything is, we're trying to figure out like what's not working and how can we fix it.

So that memo is sent out a week in advance of the meeting.

We then go into the meeting, they present the department head presents directly to the city manager effectively the same content that's in that memo, but the memo gives participants the opportunity to kind of think and prepare in advance of questions and ways to identify areas of improvement.

And then after that meeting, we identify areas of follow-up, which then feeds into that next cycle.

So there's a follow-up memo after that meeting where the data is presented, decisions may have been made in the meeting.

Some decisions may be made after the meeting.

That's all encapsulated in that follow-up memo.

It then kicks off the next cycle.

We're currently looking at a quarterly cycle.

So every three months, departments will be meeting where we do have urgent issues we want to address.

Clearly, they're going to be more frequent, but in terms of the more regular kind of business operating cadence, if you will, across most departments will be going on a quarterly basis.

This is what the room will look like.

So in the front and center, the department head is going to have a podium.

Behind them will be screens with data and their presentation slides.

They'll be flanked by both, so on the sides of the room, we'll have both their division managers and other program staff that may be responsible for implementing programs, as well as supporting departments like human resources, city attorney, IT, and finance.

Clearly, those are all issues that may end up being blockers or barriers to change or making progress, and so that's why they're there as the experts to tell us, hey, you know, we can't just change to a department's classification or role may you know create some issues with the labor groups.

So HR would advise on those.

Obviously, attorney would advise on legal issues, IT would advise on technology issues, and finance will help us figure out the money piece of it.

And so right there in the front of the room is gonna be the city manager, the assistant city managers, and whoever else the city manager wants.

We're gonna be the ones really kind of receiving these presentations and responding in real time and working with the department heads.

I think I covered a lot of this.

I kind of combined, we're working on an internal slide presentation, so that's why the slides are a little bit different or the fonts are a little bit different.

I think we covered a lot of this, but yeah, focusing on this idea of like shared learning, you know, understanding this is not a gotcha game, we're not trying to, you know, punish anyone.

This is an opportunity to learn.

Data can be really informative in terms of helping us improve, and when we're honest about that, about where we are where we're at and where we want to go, that's that's how we improve.

And so that accountability through follow-up is really that core principle that underlies all this.

We're really kind of starting in this first phase of data, this first stage of what you might think of as data maturity.

So stage one is really just the basics of you know, timely completion of tasks, you know, allocation of resources, uh, tracking outputs, in stage two, we're starting to look at organizational design, service design, efficiency of those services, and then in stage three, we're starting to look more towards outcomes and collaboration, and so that's really where a lot of the efforts around homelessness really come in come into play.

Obviously, the city has not been in this homelessness services business for a long time.

A lot of that has been held with the county, but there's a lot of joint collaboration between the city and the county that's uh steadily been emerging, and so that's that's really kind of your highest level of data maturity, is when the city and the county can really think about their individual contributions being greater than the sum of its parts and using data to tell that story.

I think I might have left out that piece of it, but that storytelling is probably the most critical.

So when we talk about the public transparency piece, of course, we're gonna have public dashboards, but really using those as launching pads to tell stories to help make the connection between the taxes that residents pay, the services that they receive, and the outcomes that those ultimately influence.

Try to wrap up here.

Um, there are a few other pieces.

I talked about the strategic work plan, it's kind of this lightweight strategic plan, it's not citywide.

I'll get into why that is in a second.

The performance agreements, these are individual signed agreements between the department heads and the city manager that outline the goals for that department to be implemented by that department head, and that's gonna be kind of the basis of their individual performance review, and hopefully that cascades down within each department so that department heads know that they're gonna be accountable for these results and they're gonna create that culture within their departments of you know high accountability emphasis on data and outcomes.

And then of course, you know, the baseline operational and equity data are critical.

Um I think this is probably my my favorite piece of this is all is it's um really looking at continuous improvements.

So being successful doesn't mean that's the end, that just sets the bar even higher.

And so we want departments to really think about continuous improvement, and that means when you do well, we want to see you do it do even better the next year.

And where that can't happen, and you know, if that's um due to resources or other issues that are outside of the city's control, we understand that, but where we can continue to drive efficiencies, especially with you know, more.

I'm not saying that AI is like super emerging within the organization, but at some point it will be, and I think that will present an opportunity to really um help uh individual staff have be much more productive in terms of the work that they do and really enable us to set higher targets year over year as we complete these strategies.

So uh let's see here.

So performance stat is not just a system or a model, it's a leadership strategy.

It only works if leadership uses it consistently.

That's a quote from uh Robert Bain of the Harvard Kennedy School.

So again, this priority strategic work plan is gonna serve as the foundation for Sacramento Stat.

This is kind of what it looks like when everything comes together.

I'm not gonna run through the whole thing, but we talked about the initiative.

So in this case, the example is streamlined entertainment permitting, and the huge disclaimer here is everything below that is completely fictional.

This is just an example, it's it's to show what this full stack, this planning stack would look like.

So key results would be by June 30th, average entertainment permit processing time is reduced by 30% from the previous baseline, and at least 75% of applicants will rate that permitting process is clear and accessible.

So not just looking at the efficiency, but kind of that customer satisfaction side of it as well, the customer experience.

Uh, some milestones we're gonna be using to track progress might uh be an online permitting portal that goes live in month three, an updated ordinance that might be needed by month six, and uh applicate applicant satisfaction survey that goes out in month nine, and then specific performance measures we track along the way are listed on the screen.

So, let's see.

So, yeah, so I swear I'm almost finished.

Sorry, I like my notes here are not matching up with the screen.

So every objective in this framework has a person behind it, a resident who's waiting, a family for things for whom things need to be different.

This is about people's actual lives and creating change, and that's not just about change for residents, it's about culture change within the city.

And um, you know, about a year ago, I think a little bit less than a year ago.

Um, my boss, the chief of staff, Amy Williams, and the finance director Pete Coletto, they presented the update of where we were at that time in terms of the city's performance uh management efforts, and I will just say um the big change that's happened between now and then has been our new city manager who's really given us a green light.

This is a high priority for her, and we're just running with it.

So, in terms of implementation, we're looking at a two-year roadmap.

Um, we're wrapping up this design phase.

Um, that should be done by well, it's pretty much almost done.

We're actually already moving into implementation.

So phase one is gonna be this coming fiscal year of July 1st, 2026, ending on June 30th, 2027.

It's a pilot, we're focusing on the eight departments that are aligned with that priority strategic plan we presented.

We'll take all the lessons we learned from that, expand it out citywide in year two.

So that'll start a year from now, in July 1st, 2027.

So at its core, uh, this is about connecting what we say matters to what actually changes for residents.

We are building a system where priorities, work, and results are visible and accountable.

This will take time, and we're starting deliberately with a pilot, learning what works and scaling it across the organization.

But the goal is simple: one system, one story, and one way of delivering results for the people we serve.

Thank you.

So, with that, I'm I don't know.

Um, if you want to I can field questions, but I don't know if there's any public comment or how you all want to proceed.

Do we have any speaker slips on this comment?

Thank you, Chair.

I do have one speaker on this item, Mr.

Lambert Davis.

As I was listening to Mr.

Rugani and and everything that I heard, uh, I'm not sure.

I'm I'm sure you're not aware, but this weekend, my family celebrated our mother and father coming to Sacramento in 1946.

Try to grasp that.

That's 80 years ago.

80 years ago, and we celebrated that this weekend, and while I was sitting there, while everybody was really festive, I was really thinking back on what they had to go through when they got here.

They had the money, they tried to buy uh property in Woodlake and they couldn't get in there because of restrictive covenant.

See, I was thinking like that while they were celebrating.

I was trying to figure out what those two wonderful people uh were subjected to.

And then I come here tonight and I listen to uh presentation here, talking about uh all neighborhoods and uh uh measure effective, uh no impact uh inside the stat room, uh off-site meeting.

You know, there's a lot of lot of off-site meetings where I come from when you study too long, you're studying wrong.

This should be resolved now.

You have all of this technology at your fingertips.

Uh people should be held accountable.

It says culture change.

What kind of culture change is that mean?

The new city manager is doing a wonderful job.

She's doing the opposite of what Howard Chan and the rest of them did.

That's why she's getting the results she's getting.

Like I told her on the rostrum.

I said you cannot be popular to get this accomplished.

You have to go the other way and live with the results.

Thank you for your comments.

Chair, I have no more speakers on this item.

All right, thank you.

Commissioners wishing to speak or ask questions on this.

We have um Commissioner Pasco.

Thank you.

Um, thanks for the presentation.

It's very interesting model.

Um I'm curious about I think we've had this discussion like with every presentation we've had from different departments, but it seems like what you measure is going to impact what results you get and what the perception, you know, whether that aligns with like the perception of what's happening in the city, you know, like on homelessness.

I know I've commented like one of the measures the city looks at is how much volume of people's belongings is put in the trash, which I don't think is the right measure of progress on homelessness.

So I guess my question is: where are we in the cycle of like who's picking the what's measured that folks are judged against?

What's the process for that?

Is it a council decision?

Is it a management decision?

And like is there opportunity for the public to weigh in on?

Yeah, good question.

Um it's definitely like starting out is a management decision.

So kind of how we're doing this, for example, in the case of the community development department for streamline Sacramento, uh, they will basically propose a set of performance measures and deliver them to us in the city manager's office.

We'll look at those, map try to map those and make sure they align with the department, with the department head is um Matt Hertel, and make sure that those align with not only his performance agreement, but the basically the results and outcomes that and objectives that are in this priority strategic plan.

And so I think what we're hoping for is that since we do want that alignment between those performance measures as indicators of progress against this larger priorities strategic plan, which we haven't had before, since that plan is really trying to be resident-facing and outcome focused, that there would be better alignment to kind of get to the type of performance measures that you're talking about.

Um but it's really gonna be an iterative process where we kind of go back and forth.

We we look at what data is currently available, and in many cases, there's gonna be data that we need to um to measure our success, and we just don't currently have it.

And so in that case, the plan is gonna be what we would call like a data readiness um target where we want them to get to a place where they are able to track and measure those um indicators or results.

Commissioner Shanson.

Thank you for presentation.

And uh it is very strange to see you up there, but I um my question will be brief and it's on my favorite topic.

I know this is probably more geared towards the city council, but on the development of the priorities.

I know that your office is implementing the priorities, it's operational, it's you know, this performance that I love efficiency, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I want to talk about the development of the economic development, public safety, homelessness.

Is there I think I already know the answer to this.

Was there any discussion in the development of those of saying looking at the measure you priorities and the measure you uh in terms of community involvement and all that stuff, or is it safe to say it's one city, one future, one budget?

Where everything is just considered together, right?

Because that's how a city operates.

But there wasn't any discussion or delineation of the various funding mechanisms that go into the city budget, it's just like one general, these are the three, um, I forget the term that you use for this.

What priorities?

The three priorities is citywide, right?

It's not delineated in any financial metrics.

Yes, that's exactly right.

Um they they were developed at an all-day workshop in September of 2025 that was facilitated by a consultant, and we do have a report on that.

I'd be happy to share it with you.

Uh, one of the things I guess I didn't mention is we are literally in the middle of wrapping up final edits to that priority strategic plan.

And so we will create a web page, and I'll be happy to um to share that web page with you all um once it's published.

I think we'll also include there is a report that summarizes that workshop.

Um we had a graphic facilitator who was kind of taking notes and drawing graphics that kind of depicted the overall flow of the conversation.

I I will say there were um topics that came up around funding, but they weren't specifically to measure you, and I think the finance team might have spoken to this at the last meeting with respect to just the reality that the city does kind of see its general fund money.

Actually, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but just I think you all have kind of heard the city's official perspective on how measure you is a portion of the general fund, um, but it's kind of programmed as general fund, and I'll I'll leave it at that, where it's used for any um municipal purpose.

Yeah, and I and that's that's the offshoot of having measure you go through the general fund, right?

There's no there's no uh boundaries to how that could be used.

And I I know this again is something I should get I could look at the public record, but you're here asking me, is are those priorities?

Were they like unanimous?

This is a pretty important strategic decisions that were made.

Like these are the priorities that then set forth how the cities runs and operates, right?

And I know it was a public, but it was like voted on, was it unanimous?

Are these three like the city council unanimously all agrees that these are the three priorities that we are moving forward with?

Unanimous would be um I don't know if that's the right word.

I think there's definitely consensus that those three priorities were the highest cross-cutting priorities among each amongst each individual council member.

So the way that they were determined, it was really kind of this, and this is why it was an off-site meeting because it would have been really hard to do it from the dais, but you know, in this physical room at the convention center, it was laid out where they could sort of go to different parts of the room, and they used dot voting to I think each council member had a certain number of sticky dots that they could vote on.

So of the universe of I wanna say maybe 12 to 15 priorities that were suggested as potential candidates, they used their fixed number of dot dots.

I don't I think maybe each one of them had like three or something.

I'm getting all these details wrong probably, but ultimately the three priorities that rose to the top were the ones that had the highest number of votes.

Got it.

Uh yeah, and you said that you again, I know this is public record, obviously.

Can you share the report from that or any other thing?

Yes, and I'm sorry, I didn't make the connection.

When I I'll not only email that out uh just to you directly after this meeting, but I think it's part of that whole story of how we got to how we got here in the first place, and so when that web page goes live with the next or the updated version of the strategic plan, we will include a link to that report as well.

Okay.

So people can kind of see the the arc of where we've been and where we're going.

Great, thanks.

I think it was pretty interesting.

Um that you guys use the terminology honest data versus clean data, which is a a pivot that you don't usually see when talking about data.

So if maybe you can speak a little bit to that differentiating between honest and clean.

But then secondarily, I'm gonna wrap it all in one.

Um, when you're sharing about the setup of the room and really the accountability aspect, which I think like you said is very different from previous um city managers and structure, um, what is the implication?

Like just worst case that they don't meet that guideline.

Like what has um city manager um, you know, Smith, uh, I get not outline, and you can't speak for her, but like what what is that gonna look like?

Like where's that accountability?

Because that's a new I think aspect as well.

So what is that accountability gonna look like in the plan if they don't um come into alignment with whatever they set for their data measures and impact and they don't meet that, then what what is the outcome of that?

So on the latter point, I can't speak too much to that other than to say um she's the city manager's been very clear this is not a gotcha game, and this is an opportunity to learn.

So we can't if we can't admit or show where we're not s successful, you know.

If you're not what there's like this great phrase, um I used to say I'm gonna see if I can think of it, but if you're not failing, you're not learning, and if you're not learning, you're not improving.

And so what is so when we talk about being honest with data and clean data is very important as well, like if it if it's not clean, it's not honest.

Um, but uh the honest data means um I'm trying to think of uh an example here, but just uh in in the abstract, if a department was basically setting a certain objective to to hit a certain target, and they focused all of the department's resources to hit that target, meanwhile, the rest of their services suffered because of that, that's not honest.

Honest data means we're seeing the full context of all of the services that that department provides, and so yeah, it's not even necessarily like dishonest, it's just like what is the full context?

What is what is the full story?

Um, and then again showing where, you know, not just a dog and pony show where we're showing all the great things that are that are going well, but also the things that aren't going so well.

Again, so that we're constantly improving, um, we're learning, we uh, you know, are finding those areas where we need to improve.

So, really just a move towards more transparency and being able to come to the forefront and uncover what might not be going the best, so you can get better versus focusing on what's going good and neglecting what's not going good.

Exactly.

Thank you.

All right, Commissioner Sana.

Thank you for taking the time to come here and present.

I just had to say that very good presentation.

Um I have a couple questions.

So I know that we have we had our ad hoc committee that was working on benchmarks and data, which sounds similar to your embedding it.

So how is that gonna work?

Great question.

So idea, so where we're at right now, it's a very boring part of the phase, but we're boring part of the process.

We're kind of just building up our infrastructure.

Um the good news is departments, and we've we've shared data previously with you all.

Um departments have data, they have systems.

We now need a centralized system where especially someone like me or the rest or the city manager herself can look and have you know complete 360 degree visibility um at any point in time, and so we need to basically be able to pipe all that data in real time into a central dashboard or system.

Um the data that we prioritize because if we just if we start focusing on every single metric that a department has, we're never gonna get to where we want to go, and so we're gonna prioritize those performance measures and metrics that align with that priority strategic work plan.

Once we have that system in place, we'll be able to build out that internal operations that we need for using data as a management tool internally, and then once we get to that point, we can actually, and I'm happy to kind of meet offline with the metrics ad hoc committee.

We can look at um the measure you programs and try to see where there is alignment.

I think there is strong alignment, particularly in homelessness and uh economic development, and then share that data that we're able to share um with you and with the full committee, and so timeline wise, I wouldn't see that realistically coming to fruition until maybe the end of the year.

Um, but I think it's something we can continue to collaborate with with the not only the full commission but the ad hoc committee.

And again, if um I know the chair isn't here right now who kind of leads that um metrics ad hoc committee, but I'm happy to meet any time if you all want to have an offline conversation and get into more detail and check in in terms of where we're at.

But I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, because one of the things that we want to do this year, and that's why we're starting to look at departments early, is so that we can make our recommendations.

Will we so the data with the the you said 31 initiatives from the three priorities, correct?

Yes, and they're um, so will we benefit will we have the opportunity to look at some of that data to help inform us, or is it gonna be for now just separate process?

Um I think eventually we'll we'll be able to share the I guess one way I was thinking about phrasing what I just said is we can't do something externally that we can't do internally, and right now we can't internally do what the thing that you want us to to do for the commission, we can't even do between a department and the city manager's office.

We can it's just um it's gonna we need a it's a large organization, uh 12 departments.

We need to create some consistency and some sh some common systems so that everybody's um moving at the same cadence and using the same data infrastructure, and so in many cases that's gonna take um identifying data stewards within each department, training them to use the new systems and platforms that we use.

So we really need to make this work internally before we can make it work externally.

Otherwise, it's just gonna look really messy.

And I'm just candidly, right now it looks very messy the way it looks internally, and that's you know, that's what we know we need to fix.

I mean, we can't do any of what what I just shared with the data systems we have.

The first the community development is the pilot that's gonna implement their test driving all of what you've put forth that you want to see happen, they're starting it, and then there'll be an evaluation, an improvement made, or a tweaking of how that went.

Yes, but this is gonna happen very quickly over a several weeks.

I mean, this is in some it we're starting to look at what the the rollout looks like.

Um there are a total of eight departments that align with one at least one initiative in that strategic plan.

Um in the case of like the youth parks and community enrichment department and public works, like public works only has a single initiative, so we're probably not gonna prioritize them.

Um so we're kind of trying to think about starting with uh streamline with the Department of Community Development, moving into homelessness, potentially then uh police or fire, um, economic development.

So we don't have that exact um collection of departments identified at this point, but the goal would be by um the f the end after the first quarter, so the first quarter ends at the end of September.

So by October, hopefully most of those eight departments have had a chance to go through at least one stat cycle.

And at that point, the infrast at least some basic infrastructure will be in place, it's not gonna be a one-and-done type of thing.

We'll continue to iterate and improve it.

Um, you know, because we want to things are changing really quickly, especially like with AI.

I don't know.

Um, yeah, I won't I won't get into it, but like, because I'm talking about like data and technology, we're just seeing a lot of really innovative products out there that um will help speed up and and standardize how we do this work.

Um I just have two more and then so I agree with Commissioner Pasqual when she said that the data like who how is who's making the decision of what data is being looked at because that's starts right, so garbage in, garbage out.

So if if the data isn't isn't good, then we're not gonna have a reliable um accountability for the department.

So I agree with her, like who who's making the decision of what data, and I know you said that it's being left up to the managers to to determine that because it's gonna be tied to the performance management, their performance management.

And the first thing that I thought of, if I was a manager, I would be very careful about what data I collect and what I'm measuring because if it's gonna be tried tied to my performance and my money at the end of the year, because we all know that certain managers get bonuses for meeting their goals, or I think that's the structure they I I don't know.

At leery of whether managers are really gonna want to put the dirty laundry out there in front of the other managers and everything because they're gonna be held accountable at the end of the year to their to what they said their performance management or performance um their performance was gonna be and evaluated.

So I'm a little bit yeah, so how what where's how's that gonna work?

Which data gets selected uh or you know, the buck stops with the city manager for sure.

Um myself along with the assistant city managers are advising the city manager, but she's actually very she brings this background from other cities that she's worked in, and she has the vision, and I will just say the amount of the time and effort that we're investing into this, um if the scenario that you're sort of saying is a possibility, if that were to come to life, we would all know that we're just sort of wasting our time.

And no trust me, nobody nobody has time to waste uh in this organization in this it's a very dynamic city, there are many things happening, and so I just think there's some natural um incentives in place that will um avoid this this type of scenario that you're talking about.

But of course, um when I mentioned honest data, that's that's exactly the thing that we're trying to avoid.

And so and I think the key to all this is creating a culture where it's more about learning and less about punishment.

So this isn't about you know, hiring and firing the you know people based on their performance.

It's about like what are we trying to achieve?

How are we doing in terms of achieving it, and what do we need to do differently if if we're not achieving it?

And okay, and then just so their meeting in this in the stat room where everyone is that gonna be every six months?

When how it should be quarterly for most departments, and other issues or topics um that require more frequent meetings, we'll meet more frequently.

And when they do that, since they're gonna be presenting um at how when will it be made public?

Like what was the results of that, or it won't be until or will never be.

How how does the public how do we all hear about this was their goal and this is what they presented, and this is the outcome.

Yeah, I mean, I think candidly that level of detail, like we're not gonna publish a word by word transcript of everything that was discussed in the room, but um we have committed to council um semi-annual updates that we would bring to them, and so that they will council will get regular status reports.

Um I know that format of the of the council meetings um where we would present these updates is you know, I know I know those sort of the brown act type of meeting is not always like the the most ideal um format for public engagement, but um we will have a public transparency piece to this, and so the same information that we share with council, we'll be able to share with the public.

Thank you.

I know this is a lot of work, but it's it's headed in the right direction, so okay, that's it.

I'm done.

Thank you.

Um, so wow, this is exciting.

I'm I'm thrilled that you guys are doing this.

Um over the thirty five years I was working in and in various roles in and around the public service, uh, participated in a few of these uh uh these efforts.

And um, you know, the they can be fantastic for helping you define your operations, figure out where you can gain efficiencies, um, implement some real systemic change and cultural change as well, which is wonderful.

But I anticipate that you're going to uh run into a few of the same problems that a lot of these efforts have historically, which is your public entity, uh particularly one here in California where you know you're setting your goals today, but you've got a lot of moving pieces in the interim, particularly if you're talking about something uh like homelessness funding and homelessness programs, uh, where the targets are set by the conditions of the grant or whatever else you're applying for, um, and that in turn is going to c color your your your performance, your defined performance objectives.

Um, and so you're gonna have this juggling act between what the your funder wants to know, what is meaningful to the department and the the city council and uh what's communicable to the general public who's going who may have be asking that question differently.

Um you mentioned that um this is going to be less carrot and stick, uh which I think probably is a very good thing, um given that uh so much is flexible.

But I'm wondering how you're going to top down um adjust as you go forward because a lot of your inputs are going to be elastic.

As I mentioned, not just the grant programs, but um all the things consumed that consume your your uh resources.

Um I think uh what was it, community services?

Um, community development, excuse me.

They spend uh a lot of time going to different parts of the city.

Uh that is fuel.

Fuel has gone up by what is it, uh thirteen percent this year, I think it was since the start of the the war with Iran.

Um, we're still projecting uh a six percent budget deficit going forward.

Uh all of that has to be built into your uh goals, otherwise the goals are going to be no one's gonna be able to achieve them.

One and two, they'll be they'll be meaning meaningless for understanding whether or not a department actually did what it said it was going to do.

Um so my question is what what's your trip point?

At what point does someone say there is no way that I can meet these objectives?

Uh I have 11 fewer staff than I did last year when we defined this.

Okay.

Uh so I honestly I don't have a a good answer to that question.

I obviously we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

But I think everything you're pointing out though is just that is the dynamic of working in the public sector.

I mean, this is it's hard work.

We're bounded by all many rules and procedures, and um it's n it's not easy to do anything, to be honest.

Um, but yeah, in terms of hopefully we're not shifting the goalposts, so to speak.

I think if we are, I think there will be some caution that's taken when we set these specific um objectives publicly, and so I think there may be, you know, uh a portion that isn't isn't out there or may you know, hopefully folks aren't setting goals too low.

I mean, I think there's a lot of dynamics that can drive behavior and we just have to monitor for that and do the best we can to adapt to changing circumstances, but at least by putting out what it is that we're trying to accomplish.

I think adding this context of what happens along the way throughout this journey.

Um again, telling not just sharing, you know, data dashboards, but telling stories behind the data, so people understand the why, um, why something went well, why something didn't go well.

I think that can do a lot for um increasing public understanding, particularly when we aren't able to achieve those goals.

Um and a lot of times, you know, it's it's not necessarily changing the goal, but maybe the time frame that we're actually going to achieve it.

I just saw um it's a very uh timely issue you raised.

The city had um a program called Vision Zero.

Zero traffic fatalities by I don't know when it is or was we're not gonna hit that target.

Um I have not been involved in in vision zero, so I can't speak to the specifics of it, but what I do know is there's currently an effort to develop um a revised vision zero action plan, and presumably there is some kind of uh awareness that vision zero is still the target.

We're just we didn't get there as soon as we wanted to.

We still want to get there.

So now with this new updated action plan, there are opportunities for public engagement um to revisit the strategies and tactics that we're using to to get there, and hopefully that does uh bring that future end state sooner rather than later.

Um, but I think admittedly we did not or will not achieve that target.

So, thank you.

Commissioners Ruiz Benitas or Van Jovelo.

Um I love what you're doing, and I think there's a point of collecting the data, informing the public, telling the story, and I'm gonna drive to what really drives me on my comments.

Um and my are more suggestions are not questions, the first ones.

Um, make sure you actually diversify your data.

Um, for instance, on economic development, there's parks and uh city amenities.

What's an amenity?

Are there different levels of amenities?

Are there just pools?

Are there the libraries that we're talking about?

Are there specific things that we need to make sure that we map out so we understand if something is being impacted, it's not just the whole, but there's specific layering that it probably if we're able to analyze it a little bit more, we can have better um better analysis or more comprehensive analysis rather than just oh, there's a center of city amenity and so on and so forth.

And the next part, and I think you did it more in internal, but rather in the external uh in the broader across uh departments, don't look at data in isolation.

When we look at data of isolation, we create really stupid stories that really don't really tell us that actual analysis of what is it what's actually happening.

And there are times that something affects the other, and just because we're not looking at the both data, we're not really getting the entire picture or how things are really um uh progressing or being impacted by the decisions that we made.

Um, which drives me to the point I was really happy about forecasting.

Once we're able to have the data and we have that infrastructure, can we use the data in a way in where if the Colonial Heights library is gonna be closed for six or eight months?

How's everything gonna be impacted in the ecosystem or what the city is?

How the resources have to be moved around so our community still get the services that they need.

So it's not just one bus in the parking lot, so there's more other things that needs to happen.

And I think that that's the power on all this uh framework, which I hope it does, and it doesn't take us 23 years to get there, but rather ensure us that yes, there are the internal and external uh buy-ins to ensure that we get to a point in where we can run as an effective city.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you for that.

Moving on to discussion item number seven, which is results and lessons learned from participatory budgeting, the pilot program, project implementation grants, the final report on project results.

Welcome, Ash.

Good evening, Vice Chair, uh Commissioners.

Um I actually don't have a presentation prepared for you all.

I just wanted to share a little bit of context on this item.

Um, when I guess it was um the the budget ad hoc presenting the budget recommendations to the city council's budget and audit committee on May 5th.

Um we did receive a request to have a report on the results of the programs.

So we went to work and so we uh compiled this report that's in your packet.

I think I'll really just pose the question, or let me first say it like I think as staff.

Um we had many different departments, many different staff managed the individual grants.

We're able to pull all that information into this single report.

We want to be able to say that the commission approved this report, so we are asking for your approval, but um it's sort of up to you how you want to go about that.

So it is agendized on your agenda if for tonight if you want to take a vote on it.

But if you want to spend more time looking at it, if through a new ad hoc committee or an existing ad hoc committee, um we could do that as well.

So I really just want to defer to the commission in terms of what it wants to do with this report, but effectively we are asking you to approve it.

Um, the last thing I'll note is it's still a draft.

Um, the only thing that I expect will change if anything is in some of the individual projects that says pending staff verification.

We are still awaiting some staff to actually review and just validate that the data are correct.

Um we kind of went through a pile of reports and uh we went through the meetings where the individual grantees presented to the commission, and we just kind of put it all together, but need them to do uh a quality assurance to make sure everything's accurate.

But ultimately, um just wanted to hand it off to the commission and see how you'd like to proceed with it.

Thank you for that, Clerk.

Do we have any uh speaker slips on this item?

Thank you, Chair.

I do have one speaker slip, Mr.

Lambert Davis.

Okay.

For those of you who are new or aren't familiar with that, it says lessons learned from that.

Uh when they said they were gonna come into district two, that's where I'm from.

District two has over 20 communities, so what did I do?

I said, I'm gonna follow them wherever they go in district two, and I'm gonna go to a meeting and see how they handle it in different communities.

Uh two places bought cheesecakes from us, so we were there.

We handed the same paperwork in to Ash Ragani's department.

Same thing.

Then we went to others.

Then there was some that canceled outreach.

You weren't supposed to receive funding if you canceled outreach.

District 2 PBID canceled two appointments that I went to, and they still received 20,000 from uh participatory budgeting.

Now the director or the chair that used to be here, her name is Marge Dickison.

She said in front of Sacramento City Council, I was stunned.

She said that what happened to Lambert during the participatory budgeting process was unfortunate.

That took a lot of courage to say that, and then she said he may be the most engaged person in uh district two.

Yeah, I don't know about that, but there also was an advantage given to the Asian community, which sacrificed the black and brown who wanted to participate.

It was a group called Asian Resources Incorporated, and it was a chick it was a commissioner that resigned once we were able to discover that, and that was just for a million dollars.

They cheated like that.

Thank you for your comments, Chair.

I have no additional speakers on this item.

Okay, opening up the floor to commissioners.

So Commissioner Riaz B Riaz Bini has or Commissioner Novello.

That would be me.

This thing coming came out.

Um just because of time um and the fact that that report is actually not in a final uh form, I would uh propose that we move this um item to the next meeting.

So if I need to prepare a motion, I'm happy to do so.

The next meeting.

So he's asking for more time for further discussion and a review of the report, correct?

Uh that it that reports in the draft form.

And I don't feel back the next ver or hopefully it's the final version by then.

Thank you.

Commissioner number one, consider running the uh sh I haven't made a motion, so sure.

Okay, if you want to say that motion.

It would simply be this.

Um Ash recommended that maybe we should convene uh uh uh an ad hoc.

Um in anticipation in anticipation that the the report eventually will be in final form, by the way, I shared concerns about the fact that it's not um in anticipation that it would be.

Um would it be impossible to form that committee right now and start working in the parts of the of the report that are not uh awaiting staff?

What is what's uh staff verification?

There are parts of there are parts that that we could start working on right now that look like they're more or less finalized.

Am I reading this correctly?

Yeah, I mean, that's not what in my preview, that's actually the chair uh on forming that uh hard committee, so I would leave it out to her.

But well, I mean, would that satisfy your concerns?

Yeah, okay.

Okay, we have other commissioners wishing to speak on this topic.

Commissioner Salah.

Yes, I that was what I was gonna suggest is that's all you thought.

I know I should have I should have pushed before you.

Um, gotta be fast, gotta be fast.

Yeah, I I think that would be important because there are so few of us that were here from the very beginning, and so we have an opportunity to give feedback because we were involved in the very beginning, and that might require more than what we can accomplish at the meeting, and if we had a ad hoc, um it would be easier to do, and then I have a question could we bring someone who was on the commission who was one of the early persons involved with this whole process as part of the ad hoc, or the ad hoc can only exist within the commission?

Okay, if if we may too, there is original report that I noticed you're uh incorporated on your last emails.

Um so there is the uh the backing of at least integrating those comments onto this particular evaluation.

I believe that to be true, okay.

Um Commissioner Pasco.

Um I wasn't here for the very beginning of participatory budgeting.

I came on kind of toward the end after all the the money had been awarded, but uh the projects were not all complete.

And um I totally understand folks wanting to spend more time with it, but I had run in to speak to comment that I thought the report uh did a really good job of uh synthesizing at least the discussions that I was here for, um, in terms of how you examined kind of the trade-offs that had to be made during the process of um, you know, in terms of just this the staffing, the um the the budget for consultants and and um data analysis and um but also the the parts that people were really proud of and the impact on the organization.

So um I I thought the report was great.

I totally also understand if people want to spend more time.

Commissioner Johnson.

Yeah, you said a couple I had a couple quite quick questions.

One is this is something that we've been talking about for a while, getting more participatory budget, and it sounds like uh councilwoman Maple was the one that wanted to get this review done.

Was is that my understanding correctly?

She just wanted to get it done, or was it a council priority, or what was the genesis of this?

Because it's it for me it kind of came out of nowhere in a positive way.

Yeah, so I believe it was part of as it can.

I want to it.

It was part of the but so when the commission was when Commissioner Smith was presenting the commission's budget recommendations for this year, participatory budgeting and renewed funding or ongoing funding was part of that um requests or recommendation to the budget and audit committee.

And in response, and this has been a we've heard it a few times, but this time they actually called me up to the podium.

Uh they the council really feels like they need to know what happened, like what did these projects actually do and what what happened as a result in terms of what happened with participatory budgeting.

I want to be really clear and say that my understanding of participatory budgeting is that it's much less about those projects because we fund many different grant programs and they have very similar results.

Um it was more the fact that the community had the opportunity to make these funding decisions directly, and that's what made it unique.

And so just as someone who does have a background in grant making and experience with grants, I don't necessarily see a huge distinction, although I will say they we lowered the barrier a bit for the types of organizations that were able to receive funding, but in terms of the activities and the outcomes that were pretty much aligned with many other grants that that we um administer as a city, but we did want to be responsive to the council members' request and kind of sort of tie a bow on on the fact that these projects have largely completed and um having um a final report that memorializes those outcomes we thought would be good.

Yeah, okay, great.

And then it seems like most of the data came from the presentations to this commission, but there's also a second-hand staff verification.

How how are they verifying because it seems like all really good results, and I have no reason to believe that that's not the case, but I noticed there's some stamps on the report saying staff verification.

Are they asking for like I don't know, logs for who showed up to meetings and stuff like that, or no no?

I mean, uh law that showed up to the whatever event the groups hosted or services they provided or things like that.

The goal is to make sure that the information presented by the grantees in these presentations and that are documented in the report.

Number one that it's accurate that we we got it documented correctly in the report, and that um number two that reflects whatever so with you know, I think it was like 12 different staff who were involved, those grantees were submitting reports in various formats and frequencies to those grant managers to city staff, and so staff have the chance to cross-check and validate like yes, the whatever was said in the meeting and documented report reflects the the documentation that we received from the grantee during that grant period.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, so there is some secondary, because uh yeah, I just want to make sure I understood, and I know that a lot of this was prepared, I think, with the support of AI and synthesizing all the information, and so just making sure that the data is correct is I know is a very important step to be done.

And I for forming an ad hoc, maybe this is a comment to the ad hoc, I would suggest we make the proposal to edit.

There's a line in there that says the measure you commission did not secure a subsequent round of PV funding at this time.

It's a very passive way of framing that.

I would suggest we save it the city council to not budget a subsequent round of the PV, because it's not up to us to do that.

We tried our best.

So um whomever is the powers that be in the Zad hoc or whomever.

Uh I just wanted to point that out.

Yeah, and on that piece I want to be really clear, we want that to reflect whatever the commission's position is.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

We're gonna pause in the meeting because we are at the two hour mark for this meeting.

So we do need to have a vote to extend the meeting for a remaining hour.

Um, so we're gonna do that at this time.

So is there a motion to extend the meeting?

Motion to extend the meeting.

Motion by member Smith and a second by member Miller.

Um all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstain?

That motion passes, thank you.

Okay.

Now acknowledging last question.

Individual could be used as a resource, but they may not be a part of the committee.

So if the if the ad hoc committee is formed, um the committee may contact other individuals per the rules of the ad hoc committees that were passed in 2025.

Um but they may not be a part, so they may not have like any actual, I guess, official say in the committee, but they may be asked questions or used us for research purposes.

Can I clarify that?

So that they would be like more like a subject matter expert to come in and maybe give a little bit of context to previous, but not having a voting or uh opinion on that move forward.

That is correct.

Okay, Commissioner Miller.

I don't know why.

Okay.

Okay, Commissioner Millennium will put you back on, Commissioner Salah afterwards.

So just a comment first, a comment and then a question for my fellow commissioners.

Um I like I really like the report, um, but uh but I I also really appreciate the um sort of the con the comments in the report and and comments you made reiterated about distinguishing between like on the one hand the city could make decisions about funding probably in a much more efficient way, it would be much less complicated, uh but the purpose of this whole thing is or one of the main purposes of it is to engage the community in in um making these decisions, and so you know, yeah, it's more expensive, it's more complicated.

There's a balance there, and I and I appreciate the way that that was pointed out in the report.

Um my question for my fellow commissioners is I guess I didn't really follow why we would need an ad hoc committee.

Somebody maybe could explain that to me.

Okay, that's the question on the table.

I want to acknowledge um Commissioner Salah because you did want to speak next, and then maybe we can have some open discussion on that.

Yes.

Um I so first of all, I would like to see if um Marge Dickinson would be willing to be a resource if we were to proceed with an ad hoc, only because she was from the very beginning, the very beginning when it first, and we do have a report that was done by the consultants for that piece, but she was also involved in the selection and review of the community-based organizations that were gonna get the money, and then she also participated and got to hear the presentations of the uh grantees, and so she might give something very valuable to us.

Um the reason for the ad hoc is I I know it's it is a good report and it's pretty straightforward, but I would like time to be able to discuss it, answer questions, comments.

Only if we're if we're gonna continue to advocate for a participatory budgeting, we need to have a strong argument, and we need to be able to show that it was effective in in its entirety, not getting money to the CBOs, and then them giving us data and the whole process of giving the community the opportunity to say you have a million or two million dollars.

How would you like that money to be spent?

Was a very it was it was important in our in our community to have that opportunity, because to be honest with you, when we first presented it to the council members, and we met individually with them before um we were funded, and almost all with the I would say all of them said maybe the exception of Katie and my um they all were all like we're we were elected to make decisions of how the money was spent it, and the community has faith in us in identifying where money's gonna be spent.

So, why do we want to go through this process?

But we were able to you know they they agree to it and because the mayor was also on board with it, they agree to it as a pilot and let's see what happens.

So it was and they were also concerned that you're gonna tell the community they have f a million dollars, five hundred thousand dollars, they're gonna they're gonna come up with some crazy ideas and and that's not what happened.

It was a thoughtful process.

The community was engaged with the exception of the cheesecake man.

They the community felt engaged and um felt uh not um were very thoughtful in the recommendations that they were making as how to spend the money.

And I think that this last budget process, while it was better than the past ones, it's still and I saw the last Tuesday, there was still a lot of this room was full, and there were still a lot of people that had comments about the budget.

It was a much better process, but it's still the community still feels like they're left out in the decision because it moves so fast.

So this up this budgetary uh um process of participatory budgeting process gives the community an opportunity like no other opportunity to weigh in and give some feedback to the city council of how to spend the money.

So we need to be solid in our report.

It needs to be a comprehensive and solid and and saying that yes it we're gonna if we're gonna ask for a million or two million, it's really not a lot of money when you when you think of how um certain projects or departments are funded, it's it's not a lot of money, but they don't wanna invest if they don't think it made a difference.

And this report shows it did make a difference.

Did the grantees had to provide data because I I was part of that and they were required to provide data.

Um maybe now that we're looking at data in a different way, maybe some of the data that they were required to report on, it was a numbers thing more or less.

Kind of how many participated, what was the diversity of your participants and how many completed your project, but we didn't have the question, did it make a difference in your life being in this in this program that you participated in.

Uh we we we received that information when they came and presented because they had um participants that were in the program that talked about their experience and how it, you know, their grades improved academically, they learned something new, they had to present some of their projects and blah blah blah.

So I I would like to be able to have that discussion and and I don't we can wait till next one and do have it on the agenda and have a discussion of the report and finalize it if you want to do it and not have an ad hoc.

But I I would like an ad hoc is gives that opportunity to put things into context in the report.

But I'm also open to delaying it.

I don't I'm not ready to vote on it tonight, but it's delaying it and having but we won't meet until August, right?

And then we're already starting with department presentations.

So Commissioner Novello.

Thank you.

And and again, my my recommendation to delay or to wait until uh table into next meetings because it's a draft form.

I don't like to approve anything that it's not finalized.

Especially city documents.

Um so I'll say that.

I I think that there's a lot of merit into this conversation.

I think we have already gone to similar exercises, especially when developing our priorities.

So probably yes, the developing uh of the uh establishment of the ad hoc committee to uh set up our objectives and maybe a strategy that they can be adopted by that uh commission could be a point of reference or guiding principles um and allow.

I know that you've done it for priorities before too, in which each one of us had the opportunity to log in on computers, click on a link, say hey, here's my input for this, here's my input for here, here's my before that.

Not only external but also internal um uh from us uh that can probably help through that process.

I know that I have opinions on a lot of this, uh, and I know that there's uh a lot of strategies that we need to think about, not only when it comes to the for internal purposes.

If you can recall, uh the participatory budget is also part of that communications and engagements uh strategy for the commission.

Um, and so making sure that we had that objective um uh laid out because it is a priority to all of us.

I don't think nobody's questioning that.

Um, it's just how we're gonna go about it.

And I think that ad hoc model can help, but again, if we can incorporate everybody else's input, that was something I would appreciate.

All right, anyone else wishing to speak on this?

Any other commissioners?

All right, so what I'm hearing is definitely that we'd like to have an ad hoc, and I I came into the commission in the process of the participatory budgeting discussion and conversation.

Um, so definitely I would like to form an ad hoc.

I hear interest from Commissioner Salah to be on that ad hoc, and Commissioner Novello.

Sure.

Is there any other commissioners?

Because I think can we have one more angel?

I'll enter and cookies, not you.

Thank you.

And city attorney, we can have up to three, correct?

On the ad hoc?

Seven.

No, we have to seven.

Okay, now so anyone else?

Anyone else?

Commissioner Novello, Commissioner Salah, anyone else?

All right, Commissioner Miller volunteering.

Anyone else?

Once, twice, sold.

Um, so we will format ad hoc committee to review in in more depth and then really to kind of frame out strategy and an agenda and a way to move forward.

Um, so Ash, with the forming of ad ad hoc, can you I'm asking you on another side to facilitate that process in terms of uh maybe some voting, or though you know kind of how we did it before.

Specifically in terms of, I'm not like facilitating the ad hoc.

Not facilitating, but like if we have to communicate or or make any decisions, anything like that.

Okay, thank you.

All righty, the ad hoc is formed.

Sorry, real quick.

Um, Chair, I'll let the turn the ad hoc as well.

That's good.

Or if it's closed.

No, no, no, no.

Okay, so we're gonna add um Commissioner Reason and his to the ad hoc committee, um formalized um to be added as well.

All right, moving on to the 2026 metrics ad hoc committee.

If there's any updates, I know Chair George Off chairs that and uh I didn't know if there was anyone else that's a part of that ad hoc that had any updates for us as a commission at this time.

Any okay, moving forward.

Are there any commissioner comments, ideas, questions, anything else to discuss?

Um Commissioner Salah, please go ahead.

Okay.

Um I want to bring this up, and I was hoping it would come up.

So at the last the passing of the budget, it was recommended.

And we spoke at budget and audit, and and I think I spoke maybe I made comments at city council that they were recommending that all commissions go to five times a year, and with the exception of the Planning commission, so my comments and my thoughts was well, that's not fair.

So that means the Planning commission is more important to you than the other commissions, and so what is that saying about our work that we do?

And the last at the um, there was a modification.

They said, okay, we're not gonna do all of them.

We're just gonna see which commissions make sense that they only meet five times a year, and which commissions it doesn't make sense that they meet five times a year.

So I'm just wondering where where are we with that?

How are is there a review and they're looking at what we do and our work plan, or they're just going to do all commissions five five um five times a year?

Sure.

So my understanding is both the city manager and the city clerk will look at um each individual commission and kind of make individual decisions.

So I don't think it will be the same rule applied to all commissions, but that is something that they are tasked with doing and there's no timeline that I'm aware of.

Oh so um how will we how will how do we influence so how do we get information to influence is everything okay?

Okay, so how do we influence or how do we give information that's that they will need in making a review as to whether we we can get our work done in five how do we have an opportunity to weigh in on before they make that decision?

I guess that's my question.

Are they taking comment?

Yeah, I guess the follow-up just to add that out.

Do we have an option to voice that opinion, or is it just going to be a decision made for us that you know?

Um I'm not aware of there being like a formal process at all.

I'm not sure how it's gonna proceed.

Um, and I'm not sure if there is a formal process, what those channels would be.

I just my understanding of the budget approval by council was that the city manager and the city clerk would be the leads, so um, you could potentially contact them individually if you wanted to.

I I don't know.

I'm I don't have any answers on this.

I know it's not on the agenda, so we can't, but I would like to take a formal position that presents to them that we have an opportunity before a final decisions made, or before a final decision is is to be able to provide feedback, they should interview us or come and talk to us and say this is what we're looking at based on your your annual plan.

Um we see that we're we determine you can make you can do your work in five five times a year, that we have an opportunity to respond to that, so and and me just contacting the city clerk or the city manager, it's just I'm just an individual, but if we if something comes from the commission, I think it's much more powerful because once they determine and make their decision, it's it's a done well, it's not a done deal, but we're we're advocating after the fact, and it makes it a little more challenging to do that versus doing it up front.

Got it.

Um I will say I did not look at the formal authorities if any that were part of the budget resolution that was approved that might or might not provide any specificity on this issue.

Um the other suggestion I was gonna make is you can always continue to contact your appointing council member and ask them to speak on your behalf and express your concerns, but um, so I would contact um vice mayor talamantes and say this is what I'm concerned about, and I would like to be able to have a um collaborative discussion, a partnership, because we're in a partnership, we volunteer our time to this to give to the city, and on behalf of the community, and I don't want to be not part of that discussion when they're trying to make a decision.

Yeah, uh the other I think that sounds right.

The the one piece I just want to make sure we're aware of, though, is if that authority was formalized in the budget resolution, remember.

Remember that the city clerk and the city manager take direction from council, so almost at this point it's more of an administrative function where I don't know if it would be within the commission's scope to like formally agenda have this on an agenda and take a vote on it.

Um we could consult with the city attorney to to look into that.

Um, but I I think it might be an open question at this point.

It's administrative.

It's an administrative direction that the council's given to them.

So part of the administrative direction should, I mean, they should be consulting with all these commissions that they're gonna reduce their time as an administrative process.

Let me I totally hear you.

I apologize, I should have thought of this sooner um coming into this meeting.

I have not looked into any of the details around this.

I'm just sort of speculating based on what I heard last week and the budget um approval.

So let me let us take a look at what decisions were formally made and kind of what options, if any, there may be for the commission to engage and then we can get back to you with a response.

Right.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for that.

And then I'd like to just add, you know, for us all to go to our respective council members and really voice our opinion on that, because you know, they are the ones that are actually sitting in the council seats and that can um you know have an impact in a say further than we can, so we can all agree to do that.

Um, and then the last item is public comments, matters not on the agenda.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on public comments?

Matters not on the agenda.

Thank you, Chair.

I have two speaker slips for this item.

Our first speaker is Lambert Davis, followed by Patrick.

Okay.

Uh measure you.

First of all, I told my family if I was in here tonight and I was one of the few left, this is it for me.

Um, measure you.

I went to a lot of meetings with May uh Mayor Steinberg.

I probably went to almost as many meetings as he did.

And as I was there, I kept asking him, hey, this sounds like a great idea to help the underserved community.

Could it help a company like ours?

We're from Del Paso Heights, we're playing by all the rules, Triple Lake, uh, A plus rated by Better Business Bureau, have a manufacturer in Southern California, used to have one here during the pandemic, and he said yes.

So I went to all of those meetings, submitted a lot of paperwork to the that's why I want them uh QA.

Uh the Office of Innovation and uh Business Economics.

Uh I have yet to receive one penny from this city.

One penny from my uh from this measure.

What does that tell you?

That's why these people are not here.

They know that it's been co-opted.

You when you combined it, it became corrupt.

Now the millennials and me have accomplished something major in Southern California.

So you won't see me here anymore.

I've seen enough.

Uh I told you I came down here to study you because I'm a native, and I told you one day I was gonna give myself a degree and graduate from this.

It's time to move on.

I'm gonna go make my, I'm gonna go take care of my family.

That's what I'm gonna do.

And I guarantee you, we're not gonna be in a scandal.

I won't tolerate that.

We're gonna sell cheesecakes and carrot cake, and then we're gonna come back and challenge this city on why they didn't give a company like ours, the native, one penny.

Thank you for your comments.

Our final speaker is Patrick.

I mean, I love you so much.

It's our nice to see you.

God bless you, beautiful.

You're too good to me.

God bless you all you beautiful people.

I'm not that good.

I'll have you.

Chatter new guy.

God bless the woods.

I'm gonna have a nice walk with a young man now.

I was like, hey man, how's that on the wrong face morning?

I was like, hey man, I'll buy a couple of cigarettes.

There's some guys have been giving me hard time for a long time.

I said, No, this is not a train.

We had a nice walk, we talked about all kinds of things, Georgia and everything like that.

And when I'm this guy on the train, he was a he was a brown.

Our families are so everything's connected.

The world isn't all who will entirely know.

All of us, I'm so proud of all of you.

A wonderful woman.

Thank you for your innocence and purity and your vulnerability.

I'll never take advantage of it.

I love you all.

Thank you for allowing me the privilege and the honor.

God bless you, beautiful man.

I know I'm nobody.

I'm trying my best.

I'm not gonna.

Oh, you got me.

Do you see me?

I know.

I can see you.

Robin, I love you.

God bless the G and the Smiths, the Browns, the freaking um, Chattering, the combine the corner.

The shirt of the Yeah.

I know I'm nobody.

I know.

You're not gonna.

What will you do for me?

I want you to know.

I'm trying to do things for our town.

There's been some baggage in front of us for a long time.

God bless you, Mr.

Kennyson.

My seventh grade teacher.

I gave him a hard time.

He's got so upset.

Me and my best friend Eddie, we used to meet my best friend Agent, we used to snap rubber bands on our visit in the on the bus on our way to school.

So we never think of any anything bad like curse wording like that.

Reading the Bible, little gideons and stuff like that.

I saw that old woman once.

She was like, when I was in sixth grade.

I love you.

I had a lot of help riding on the bus at Sharon Elementary School.

God bless uh.

Wait, Cassandra, I love y'all.

I think we need to do something about that.

It's tough for a man.

I mean, there's been some baggage surgery for a long time.

They drove them all with Nancy Johnny.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Chair, I have no more speakers uh on for matters not on the agenda.

Alright, well then that concludes today's agenda.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation.

This meeting is adjourned.